The Hell We Built
by Paradigm of Writing
Summary: He stares at the wall. He puts his ear to the wall. He screams at the wall. He punches the wall. His efforts are to no avail, there's nothing on the other side. Until, one day, there is. A voice. A woman's voice. A woman's voice that he understands, a woman's voice that he knows. His companion, his only friend, in the hell the two of them built together. [Dedicated to RouttMeister]
1. Vernacular

**Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new idea of mine that hit me a few days ago, at around 11 PM or so and thus the idea caused to me write about 2k words to end up at this starting point. I am dedicating this story to one of my real life friends that I know on here - actually, the only one I know in real life - named RouttMeister. He and I have been through a lot, and it was his birthday just a few weeks ago, so a very,** ** _very_** **late birthday present if you will. This is called, 'The Hell That We Built' and I know that the title is quite freaking foreboding, but it features Luigi and Lucina, so what can go wrong? Enjoy the first chapter, #1: Vernacular. *P.S, there's a little thing you're going to notice about their name... it is absolutely intentional.***

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 _The Hell We Built_

 _Chapter #1: Vernacular_

He stares. He stares harder. He is staring with such a ferocity that the lines begin to blur together and waver over the other, zany waves and lines that break and destroy the fragmented rules of illusion and sight. He looks up, he looks up and he looks up so far that his neck starts to hurt, and it is a pain that sits lowly beneath the neck and rises up through the spinal cord.

He's wondering when all of this happened, hearing the noises that come from the other side. It's a massive wall, an obstruction that literally seems to have come out in the middle of the night. Crimson coated bricks, a height that rivals Mt. Everest, and a length that goes on till the edges of the Earth. Everywhere he looks, there's walls around him, a purgatory that he's forever stuck in, where there's only one direction left to go, and that's up, _up, up till there's no more._ A white stasis of nothingness, a place that he misses with all of his heart. He misses the nothingness.

The man sighs to himself, wiping his brow. Though the sun has gone to sleep under the horizon, it is still hot and muggy outside under the navy expanse of the sky. He's in his backyard surrounded by three walls that go on for an eternity, an infinity that does not loop but steadily goes on and on and on. He hates the color red. Why did these walls have to be red? Of all the colors in the world, someone picks red? Why?

He muses the question to himself, as he takes a seat up against the far-right wall. Going inside, back in his dreary home with the muted gray walls and the blaring of static on the television is too much of a bother. He'll wither away in nature as the flesh decomposes off of his skin, and he'll take in the scent of fresh daises and emerald green glades of grass as he sits. He rests his head back against the wall, letting his hair brush up against the coarse stone. The man can feel the grooves, the portions that are smooth and bolstered and painful; he can feel it through his synapses that curl up and down his spine. Is silence supposed to be this torturous?

There's nothing around him, he observes. No crickets, no rustling leaves or the gusting of a forceful wind. All he has is this stupid wall and the starry sky above, until hellfire shall pour down from above. He wants something to happen, anything to happen would be the best, actually. He has never done well in silence; his wife could attest to that. Except she isn't here to give a truthful answer. He frowns. He hasn't thought of her in a long time, now that he takes the time to think about it. With her chestnut hair, glowing brown eyes, and a smile that weakens his knees to butter. Her waist, her hips, her hands… and all that remains on the man's lips is a ghost of her name, a name he used to remember. He no longer remembers it, but that's not his fault. The weathering and erosion of the world has caused this, and he is not to be blamed.

Something causes him to stir, the man having dozed off to the lull of nothingness under the watchful eye of shadow for a few moments. He sits up, looking about him. Nothing is amiss in _his_ yard at the very least, with the grass firmly in place, the swing staying stationary, and all the lights in his house still turned off… so what caused the noise? It comes again, sounding as if it is behind him. He looks at the wall, frowning. He has no idea how thick the wall is, let alone how high or how far it runs for. The man frowns, leaning in, putting his ear up against it.

It is the sound of something being shuffled against the dirt, as if something – or maybe _someone_ if he's lucky – is rubbing up against the grass? An animal? _A person?_

The man's voice is dry and cracks against his throat, with an Adam's apple that feels like a grainy rock being swallowed when he speaks. "Hello?" he croaks. His mouth is in serious need of hydration, and perhaps something to eat, but he keeps himself stuck in his pain because it's enjoyable. "Hello?" he repeats once more.

The brushing stops, and he freezes likewise on the other side of the wall. The man's heart is thumping up against his chest like a drum, a crackle of thunder over a valley, or horse hooves against a sodden ground.

Then, a voice. A whisper, more than anything, but an invoke of human emotion that the man can feel, and he weeps. "I can hear you," the voice says, with a feminine air to it. "Can you hear me?"

For some reason, the man weeps. He has no idea why, truthfully there's a million answers, but he doesn't want to figure that out right about now, it just wouldn't make sense for him to do so. He lets the syllables collide with his eardrum in a euphonic sound, a joyous noise of released emotion until he's leaning up against the brick wall crying his eyes out.

"You're real…" he whispers.

"Of course I'm real," the woman snips back quiet pointedly. "What did you expect me to be? A statue?" The man wishes to respond to that with something cheeky, but he keeps his mouth shut. Instead, he opts a question.

"What do you think these walls represent?"

A pause, with reflection underneath that by the way the pause is carried out. "I don't know. These walls weren't here before, were they?"

"They weren't up last night."

"Is it like a prison? I can only go in a certain straight path as large as my house…" the woman trails off, and he's afraid that she's left him. The bed isn't cold anymore, and he wants to invite her – goodness, he hasn't spoken to anyone in _months,_ is this what humans sound like anymore? – and just throw his arms around her. He looks down at his hands.

Dirty, rugged little beasts of hands they are, with scars and sores and black marks over them that hurt and hurt until there's nothing else but scorched flesh. They've done dirty things, things the man regrets when the cloth tears, or the cold feeling of the crowbar slams against something that is soft.

"Hell…" he says.

It turns out the woman he's been speaking to never left. "What?" she asks.

"It's a hell," the man whispers once more. "We're stuck in this fifty-foot block, and there's nowhere else for us to go. A hell that we can't climb out of, or outrun… we're stuck here."

"I didn't do anything to be put here."

"I did…"

"And what would warrant a torture like this?"

"You'd be surprised," the man chuckles to himself. A pause. "What's your name?"

He's taken aback by the answer, not expecting it be to something he's ever heard before. "Lucy. Yours?"

"That's funny," the man laughs nervously. "My wife's name is Lucy."

"You have a wife?"

"Yes."

"Oh. That's nice. I'm glad you love her."

He frowns. He never said he loved his wife, and he actually never, _truly_ said that he even had one, and if he did that her name wouldn't necessarily be Lucy. Part of him wants to spill forth what his name is, but that may be betraying everything he's known about himself. He licks his lips and spills it without thinking of the consequences. This is something he's unable to lie about. "Louis."

"Nice name."

"Thank you."

"My husband's name is Louis."

The man's blood turns to ice. Is this a joke? Did she say what he thought she said? Unless this is a drawn-out prank, what would be the chance that his name happens to be the name of her husband, and that _her_ name is the name of _his_ wife? The odds? He finds it peculiar, but then remembers that he doesn't have a wife, so all of this must be some sort of freakish coincidence.

"I'm glad you love your husband," Louis says, using the same tactics she had on him, hoping it'd draw out the same emotion in him that it had in her.

"I never said I loved my husband."

"And I never said that I loved my wife."

"I thought you didn't have a wife," Lucy interrupts him. Louis looks at the wall with horror. Those words hadn't left his lips, it is a thought dancing in his head. How did she...? "The wall told me," she continues. "It told me that you were lying to me about having a wife."

"But _I_ do have a wife!" Louis argues.

"No you don't. Another lie, the wall said so."

"I can't hear the wall!" he retorts.

"And that's because I'm not lying," Lucy smarmily replies with a sniff. Louis looks up at the starry sky with a frown. All of this… this incident and encounter, has to be the strangest thing he's ever been a part of.

It's what irritates him so when Lucy accuses him of lying. He _actually_ does have a wife named Lucy with her dark hair and her gorgeous figure, gracing the eyes of men and beast alike, and for her to sit here and call him a _liar?_ How dare she! Walls don't speak! Walls don't continue forever and ever without an end. " _I'm dreaming,_ " Louis says to himself with shut eyes, and then he pinches himself for effort. " _This isn't real. None of this is real._ "

"You're not dreaming," Lucy speaks up. "This is real, Louis. All of it."

A tear threatens to slide down his cheek. "How did you hear-"

"The wall told me."

"Well, the wall can go to hell."

"I thought you said that this wall _was_ hell."

"I don't know what I said," Louis snaps. "Better yet, just ask it yourself! It seems that you have this entire innateness with speaking to walls! Leave me out of it!"

He sits there in his spot, with legs squeezed together, knees brought to his chest, and a gaze pointed upwards at the sky. So, in his current state, he's trapped in a fifty by fifty-foot section of a brick wall that he cannot see the end of whether it be the height or length. He's speaking to a woman named Lucy which is the name of his wife, even though he really _doesn't_ have one. This woman – Lucy _,_ call her by her name damn it – has a husband named Louis, and apparently, she can talk to the wall as if the wall can hear his thoughts.

Something out of a fantasy story. Louis thinks about getting up and going to bed, as he can tell it must be near midnight and sooner than later he'll start to get sleepy. Going to bed and thinking about everything will really make the world easier in the morning. Trying to deduce this madness off of one cup of coffee and a half-eaten Danish is hard.

He does know this, though, and he hopes the wall can hear him. It is hell. A hell that he's stuck in with nowhere else to go, no one to turn to except for this crazed Lucy woman that he severely hopes can go and retire _herself,_ so he doesn't hear her whining.

Can someone build a hell by themselves, _for_ themselves?

Louis isn't so sure anymore, but he's never been right about anything. Just ask the wall and Lucy, they have all the answers.

"Yes," Lucy exhales quite suddenly. "I agree with you, Louis."

"About?"

"The wall itself. I didn't do anything to be stuck here, but this is hell. The hell that we built."

Oh.

That's reassuring.

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 **Lalala, there we are! That's the end of the first chapter, Vernacular! I am really in love with this piece and where I'm heading with it. I hope that the Lucy and Louis part didn't throw you off... as it it's Lucy - Lucina, and Louis - Luigi. I'm writing it to a similar style as my story Native, for those who haven't been acquainted with that piece, it's a 5 chapter, 10k piece detailing Roy and Robin as a couple struggling through financial issues, marital issues, and a whole shebang of other things, and I admit it is probably my best - if not one of my best pieces - that I've ever written, and I hope this follows suit. RouttMeister, I hope you liked the piece as well, and there'll be more to it in the near future. Thank you all so much for reading! Leave a follow or a favorite if you wish to hear more, and I'll be blessed if you do. Have a great day! Love you all! Bye!**

 **~ Paradigm**


	2. Fluidity

**Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter of The Hell We Built, Chapter #2: Fluidity. In the last chapter, you were introduced to Luigi, a seemingly simple man with contradictory thoughts... who seems to be in a pickle. Erected around his house, which extends infinitely it seems in several directions except north, is a wall. Instead of trying to find where the wall ends, he sits himself down and there's another voice behind the wall. A woman named Rose... and their connection is tenuous at best. I hope this has gotten you all intrigued. Enjoy the next chapter, Chapter #2: Fluidity.**

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 _The Hell We Built_

 _Chapter #2: Fluidity_

Luigi is back at the wall, when the sun has yet to peek over the sky with its halcyon rays. The clouds are hazy and dark, a lucid blue that reminds him of starry nights with his wife curled around his waist, her hair tickling the side of his ribcage. Diamond eyes peer back at him through a void of emptiness, her ghostly smile with pearly whites, and hands that transform into claws.

He's holding her picture, staring down at it with a warmness fluttering in his heart. Why has he forgotten her name? Why does this wall exist? Unfortunately for him, there's no shrink in any drivable distance to detail his problems to. He is unsure whether or not the entire world is now surrounded by these random brick walls, or it is his torment.

" _A hell we built,"_ he says to himself, holding the picture of his wife tightly to his chest. " _A hell we built. A hell I won't be able to escape._ "

"Are you thinking about the wall?"

Luigi groans, hitting his head back against the wall. Sometimes he yearns for silence, but after he sits down, the laziness in his bones causes him to be incapable of moving for several hours. Her voice comes fluttering on the wind, airy and harmonic, as if she's singing to a newborn baby while hanging clothes up on a line. She's a painstaking reminder of the era he used to thrive in, where he had electric fire beneath his feet, and his moves resurrected old feelings from long time enemies. Lucy is a special soul, he figures while laying in bed last night. She talks to the wall, to then act as if it is a daily routine that she does from sunrise to sunset.

"I am," he says.

"You know, Louis, I think your problem is that you don't go out enough."

He looks at the wall, using the sound of her voice to picture where this Lucy woman is. "Go _out?_ There's nowhere to go to!"

"You sat here all evening last night."

"So?"

"And the evening before that. _And_ the one before that."

"I don't see the point in this."

"Do you ever go into your house?"

"Of course I do," Luigi answers. "I sleep. I go to bed, wake up, and back out here I come and sit."

"Why? Isn't that just a waste of time?"

"I'm trying to figure out where this wall came from and why it's here."

"Looking at it or sitting up against it won't make that any easier to solve, Louis. You know that."

"Lucy, stop trying to act like the voice in my head."

"Just trying to help."

Luigi looks off from the picture. He tries imaging what Lucy looks like from only the sound of her voice. She's in her mid thirties, perhaps has several little ones to keep her preoccupied. Luigi and his wife never tried children. It didn't come up over awkward dinners with mashed potatoes and burnt steak, or over the din of the washing machine as the two scream away about financial problems. Even when his wife comes to him after a breakfast drowning in silence, and there's a hand over her stomach with a smile that is too happy for his liking, he disagrees. There is no child. That child never existed. He's glad there's never been a child.

There's nothing to keep him tethered. He digresses a lot, he figures.

Luigi goes back to thinking about Lucy. She either has dark brown hair or luscious blonde curls. Luigi has curls of his own, mahogany ones hidden under a green baseball cap. He loves the color green, always has. With emerald suits and socks, and even olive green pants, he's a walking Green Giant on the green bean cans, except for that lasting smile. _Lucy, dammit. Think about Lucy._ Now, depending on if she has the dark hair or the light hair, that affects her eye color. With chestnut colored hair, perhaps a softer shade of blue to accentuate the darkness and the brightness from her face. Light hair, means dark eyes, like hazelnut, to do the exact opposite. Maybe a dimple or two. Smile lines. A furrowed brow.

"Y'know... you _could_ just ask me..." Lucy's voice pipes up.

That shocks Luigi out of his silence. "Wh- what?" he stutters nervously.

"You're thinking about what I look like," she responds cheerfully, too cheerful - it reminds him of his wife and those stupid desires to have children, _damn her_ \- and the sound is sickeningly sweet, like yogurt. "Instead of creating _what_ you think I look like, you could just ask me. I have no reason to lie to you."

" _There are a million reasons for you to lie to me,"_ Luigi thinks to himself, then, aloud. "Did the wall tell you that I had been thinking about you."

"No. I just guessed."

"So you can read minds."

"No."

"You're the weirdest person I've ever met."

"Have you actually met me? You've only ever heard my voice," Lucy points out.

"Still weird."

"What if I'm just a figment of your imagination?"

Luigi cracks a smile despite everything, one of haughtiness and empty laughs that sound like a boiler tank. "You're funny. I'm not going crazy."

"So, do you care about what I look like?"

"I suppose." A pause. "Sure."

"My hair is blue."

Luigi's voice catches in his throat. " _Blue?_ " His mind wanders aimlessly. Is this woman crazy? She says that she can talk with inanimate objects, clearly she can read minds, she's crazy enough to probably have children, and her hair is blue. _Blue._ Luigi is stuck up on that for some odd reason, above all else. It bothers him like an insatiable itch that starts at his elbow and spreads out like molasses over his arms, down his spine, and through the tips of his toes.

"Problem with that? I happen to like outlandish colors."

"I didn't expect that, is all."

"My eyes are green. I _am_ in my mid-thirties, and no, I do not have any children."

 _Phew._

Luigi remembers when his wife - he's upset that this crazy woman he's speaking to shares the same name as his wife, he'll name his wife something else since he can no longer remember it regardless - bounces up and down on her heels when he proposes. _Liana._ Luigi calls her Liana. Liana smiles, throws her arms around him, and kisses him so hard that the two lose their footing and they spill into a water fountain. When he emerges from the surface, Liana is there first, pure joy plastered on her face with porcelain lips, droplets dripping from her strands of hair.

Her blue hair.

Luigi blinks, distorting the image into static lines.

Liana, _his wife,_ did not have blue hair. This... this Lucina person does. His mind spits the woman's name with venom. She hasn't even done anything wrong except exist in this moment and time. She's a painful reminder of what's been lost, of what has been everything good to this moment in time. This stupid wall. This _stupid_ hell. If he recalls correctly, the fountain had blue dye in it. When Luigi and Liana fell into the water, Liana's hair is drenched in the substance, and so when she emerges, that's why her hair is blue. Luigi has always needed glasses. It's dark outside. His lack of vision from having less than perfect eyesight, and from it being dark, contributes to the color. There must be another reason, any _other_ reason than that he is mixing this Lucy imposter with Liana.

"What was she like?" Lucy asks.

"What was who like?"

"Your wife. What was her name?"

"Lucy. Like yours. And since I don't want to get you and her mixed up, I'm calling her Liana."

" _Liana..._ " Lucy says, and shudders slide down Luigi's spine. She says it like a ghostly whisper, with wisps of smoke curling in between the letters, the pronounced 'i' in the name having the most shattering effect.

That name, his precious Liana's name, is not worthy of Lucy's mouth. She does not deserve the privilege of saying it, there's hardly anything in this world - living or dead - who deserves to say his wife's name. That's a travesty, something he hates to have incapable of being rectified. Life is hard enough as it is, and he's broken by it.

"Why do you not want to be getting confused between her and I since we both have the same name?" Lucy asks. _You really do not want to know the answer._

"She's fifty times a better woman than you'll ever be."

"And why's that?"

"Because she _is._ No rhyme. No reason," Luigi sniffs.

"Is she dead? Your wife?"

"And why do you want to know that?"

"From the way you talk about her, it sounds like she had died."

"Things were going great between her and I," Luigi answers, and he looks down at the picture he's currently cradling in his lap. The frame is oval-shaped, and inside is his pride and joy. "We had just moved into this house. It's two stories, with a porch and a patio, and a hot tub in our master bathroom. We were thinking about having children," he says. _You were never thinking about children. You hate those devilish beasts of flesh and lust._ Luigi bats the thought away. "One evening, I said good night to her. She kissed me back with passion, a kiss I've never felt before. She nestled down next to me later that evening, past midnight I think. I wake up the next morning and she's nowhere to be found. Her car keys are still sitting on the kitchen counter. Her grocery list is still taped to the fridge. Her car sits in my driveway, there's no note, no sign of her being kidnapped, there's no struggle... all of her _things_ still lie in the car. It's as if she never even existed. But she's real. She's real and I loved her and I'll never find another woman like her."

Lucy is silent on the other end of the wall, and for once, he wishes she'd speak. He's afraid of what she had said earlier, that perhaps this is all a figment of his imagination on a greater scheme of things. The fluidity of his thoughts bounce, like waves that crash into the shore and dissipate forever, _forever_ until there's nothing but a low hum, the hum of giving up and relenting to a cause of nothingness. Has he scared her away? For good riddance, he hopes so. She's so annoying. She's _super_ annoying, yet she's the only company he's got. Liana is to be so disappointed with him if she ever comes back, he realizes. Treating a stranger with such contempt.

"I'm sorry."

"Thank you." Luigi means it with his whole heart, even if there is currently nothing in the space that its allocated.

"How long has it been since she vanished?"

"A month." A long month with bitter, stark winter winds, and lion pelts and the stars that fall to the Earth like burning comets, all engraved with her initials, and Luigi sees her face in the sky.

It hits him that he has just shared something supremely intimate with this woman, this woman he's never met.

"I'm sorry, too," he says suddenly.

"Why?"

"I lied to you."

"Lied to me? About what?"

"My name."

Silence, the sound of someone shifting their body. "Oh. What _is_ your name?"

"It's not Louis. It's Luigi. I panicked. It's all I could think of."

"Well... if it makes you feel any better, I lied about my name to you too. I didn't want to share it."

"And what is your name?"

"It's not Lucy. It's Lucina."

"Lucina..." Luigi whispers, his head still resting against the wall.

He closes his eyes and the voice warps on the wind. Even though this new Lucina person does not deserve to say his wife's name, he deserves to say her name for all it's worth - which isn't all that much to begin with - but that doesn't bother him anymore.

 _Lucina._

 _Lucy._

 _Liana._

 _Louis._

 _Luigi._

Lucina is a much better name than Liana.

As Luigi drifts off to sleep, even though the sun is just breaking the horizon, with the chirping of the birds heralding morning's arrival, her name rests on his lips.

"Lucina..." he says to himself, curling up into a ball, hugging the picture to his chest. "Lucina... Lucina... Lucina..."

In his moments before a blurry, black unconsciousness, there's a woman engraved in his memory. Liana's face, with Lucina's blue hair.

His wife.

 _His wife._

Her name is Lucina.

* * *

 **There are a few times in my life after I write a chapter - usually a chapter - and just sit back, enjoying the words I have just thought of. This is one of those times. So, yes, Louis is Luigi, Lucy is Lucina, easy enough, and now our green clad protagonist is getting the two names confused. Getting inside their head is perhaps my most favorite thing right now, and I actually cannot wait to get the next chapter out, probably by either this Saturday or Sunday. Please review and let me know what you thought, as I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say. I can't wait for Chapter #3: Neutrality. Thank you all for reading. Love you all! Bye!**

 **~ Paradigm**


	3. Neutrality

**Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter of The Hell We Built, Chapter #3: Neutrality. Last chapter, Luigi admits that his real name to this elusive woman beyond the wall (Game of Thrones reference eyyy), and how it seems that our troubled man is mixing up Lucina with his wife and has to distinguish them by a new name of Liana. There are only two more chapters after this to go and I'm super excited to almost be done with the short piece, which is garnering far more attention than I originally thought it would. This idea had come up to me as a play of all things, and I very well might turn it into one. Enjoy Chapter #3: Neutrality.**

* * *

 _The Hell We Built_

 _Chapter #3: Neutrality_

Time seems to stand still, Luigi thinks, now that he's stuck in hell he and Lucina built. A tall, looming formidable structure layered brick by brick, and all it does is scream a foreboding challenge out to him. He has no idea how high it goes, but he wants to see if he can climb it. There must be climbing gear somewhere in the house, Lucina always loved to climb.

 _Liana,_ he corrects himself. Lucina is the name of the wild, zany woman on the other side of this wall. The crazy woman with blue hair and vivacious green eyes, and someone who can talk with mortar and grime as if it is a person. Liana, his wife, does not have blue hair, and she also has an affinity for rock climbing. Her gear must still be inside the house, as when she disappears, she's gone without a trace, yet nothing of hers is taken from the house.

He takes one of the pegs, and drives it straight into the wall at eye level. It is early when he does this, as dawn has not yet broken over the sky, which hangs into a lull of precious silence, a navy backdrop against his fervent work. _Spike. Stab. Spike. Stab._ And yet her voice comes regardless, lingering over the side of the wall like a waterfall. He wonders how thick it must be, the wall that is. It is an opaque structure since he cannot see through it. Sound waves do not travel well through solid structures. Luigi pauses again, his right hand poised cautiously over one of the pegs. If the wall isn't thick... perhaps he could smash his way through it?

The man actually hits himself in the face. Why hasn't he thought of this before? Luigi removes the pegs out of the wall, the holes created not very deep so he cannot see through them at all if he wanted a peek on the other side as to what Lucina's surroundings look like. He goes back into his house from the sliding glass doors on the patio.

He's barefoot, his feet twitching slightly at the coolness of the tile. Luigi stills for a moment, embracing the silence. He's never enjoyed watching television - Liana loves movies and loves the creepy, unnatural parts of life, so the television is always on when she's around - much rather preferring a good book, but he's thought about grabbing the remote and taking a watching to what's playing. Part of him wants to, but he always halts himself. He's afraid that what will be the reward of his actions is more silence. More of the same, like the very silence that pervades over the house. Nothing is on. No air conditioner. He's not cooking anything in the microwave, hasn't had to wash the dishes or do laundry... it is the very quietness of stilled life that bothers him more than anything else in this world.

Well...

That's in before Lucina does something bothersome.

Luigi goes through the house, passing by the leather couch he once... nevermind that, his mind breaks the thought. Liana is no longer here anymore, and it does not matter what he thinks anymore. Perhaps he should burn the entire house down. The flames would consume him whole after enough time passes over. Death by fire is the purest death, after all. He hates the idea of passing in his sleep, the silence part kills him.

He flickers on the garage light switch, and it met with more silence. It seems the hum of the light bulb in the garage light no longer works like it's supposed to. Does time stop in literal hell? Is there any noise down in the fiery furnace? Or is it another endless lull of quiet, where the only noise is the deadbeat heartbeat, or the tortured screams of a sinner forever playing in their head; perpetual agony is not something Luigi is fond of either.

He no longer thinks of such philosophical things, especially now that he's got what seems like all the time in the world. He rummages around old shelves and dusty bins, looking for a sledgehammer. Something must exist in these weathered boxes! There's a storage bin full of old pictures back when Liana and Luigi met in college, so old that cobwebs appear around the edges, the color of the photo fading into obscurity, where the greys pop a little more than they should. An old serving plate - a heritage piece of Liana's past - lays shattered in another box, pearly white and jagged lines where beautiful meets grotesque... and Luigi tastes bile in his mouth.

His hands curl around the shaft of the sledgehammer - he isn't going crazy, one _did_ exist - and he wrenches it out from it's hiding spot. He weighs it deftly in his hands, and smirks. This'll be good, he can already tell. Returning back outside, the sun is starting to slowly, ever so slowly but surely peek over the horizon with its bright rays and warm smiles. Luigi wishes he can get the moment on camera. The day hell itself is defeated is one of a momentous occasion! It should be documented for the whole world to see.

Luigi palms the end of the hammer, the black mallet still brighter than the notions in his heart. He stands well distanced from one side of the wall, lugs the hammer behind his head, twists to the side some, and swings. He lets out a yell in forward motion with the thrust forward.

The mallet slams against the wall, and Luigi's heart elates somewhat.

A loud, clamorous and clanging noise and Luigi can only describe it to the sound of a dragon screeching in pain. The hammer shakes in Luigi's grip, a spasm bounding up both of his arms, and he drops the mallet in surprise. The mallet, in all it's blackness, seems to be damaged. Luigi, still trying to combat the throes of shock, bends down. Part of the mallet is curved inwards, and the shaft of the sledgehammer is bent at an awkward angle. He looks back at the wall, his expression of confusion now mixed with fright. The hit should've busted something. Yet nothing seems out of the ordinary with the wall. No damage.

Nothing.

Then he hears it.

Lucina's voice, and she's humming a lullaby. He does not recall the woman ever mentioning he had children.

"You can't," is the first thing she says when she gets closer so Luigi can hear her clearly.

"Do what?" he asks annoyed. The spasms finally start to die down, and his muscles twitch inexorably. He looks at the sledgehammer fleetingly one last time, an anxiousness rising up in his throat. Is this wall something magical?

"Destroy the wall. You can't."

"Is that because you somehow saw me trying to do it?" Luigi steps closer to the wall, placing a hand against it. The brick is cold to the touch, almost like ice. He recoils away from it, furrowing his eyebrows together.

"No," Lucina says with a cluck of her tongue. "I'm not clairvoyant. I tried breaking it last night."

That's a surprise to him. He raises an eyebrow, standing at it from a distance. "Oh... you did? How come I didn't hear you?"

"I tried shooting it."

"With a _gun?_ I didn't hear a gunshot?" Luigi is surprised at how surprised his voice sounds.

"I had a silencer on it," Lucina says, as if that's supposed to answer any of the man's questions.

"So? I still should've heard something. Where'd you get the gun anyways?"

"It's my husband's. It's been sitting in his safe in our bedroom for the past few days. The bullet got lodged in the brick here, right where I stand. It should've gone through some of it. The wall is impenetrable."

Luigi crouches down to one of his knees, running his fingers once more over one of the grooved lines of the brick. He's confused to find that this piece he's touching is warmer than the part higher up, and a tad bit... burning. Nothing scorching, like a hot shower, but the warmth that exudes from a dishwasher in the middle of one of it's cycles, or warm clothes out of a spin... he's never been this confused about anything else in his entire life.

He notices that Lucina mentions her husband. Back when they first spoke, two nights ago, he mentions that his wife's name is Lucy, and she mentions that her husband's name is Louis, which had been Luigi's cover-up, which is what he finds so eerie about her in the first place. However, since he's spilled a lot of detail to her - this stranger - about Liana, perhaps she should do some of her own.

"You mentioned your husband, Lucina. I don't know anything about him. What's he like?"

He senses an air of tension surrounding her side of the wall. She's quiet for a moment. "Why would you want to know about him?"

"I talked about my wife. I figured it'd be just the right thing. I've mentioned a piece of my past that is still hurtful; you should be courteous and shed some light."

Lucina sniffs, that sound is as clear as day. "What would you like to know about him, if it's so important to you."

Luigi has no idea where this sudden coldness and offhandedness of distance is coming from, since he's been purely opening and forthright with Lucina this entire time. It's unwarranted and most certainly unwanted. He crosses his arms, wishing even for a second to see what she looks like in this moment. Perhaps she has a scrunched up brow in annoyance, or with her large blue eyes a look of trepidation and fear. He really, _really_ needs a camera now.

"Since you revealed her name, your wife I mean," Lucina begins, with a distaste echoing on the last syllable of each word, "I'll give him a cover like you did for yours to keep them separate. My husband shall be called Luke."

"Luke..." Luigi repeats, tongue hitting the roof of his mouth, the 'e' sound popping and reverberating in his skull. A familiar sound, the pop.

"Luke's parents were never really the greatest of people. His mother died several years ago, and his father is going through the last stages of his colon cancer. His brother is with his father now, and asked Luke to be there in Rome for the final week of treatment, as Luke's father will be cured then on from there."

"Rome? Why Rome?" It is such an exotic city, Luigi finds, and he's always wanted to visit.

"Luke is Italian. So, he left on Sunday, and then the very next day, here we are with this erected wall between us. He won't be back until the seventeenth anyways, which is another week and a half. But, hopefully by then, we won't be married anymore."

Luigi looks at the wall again, still in his crouched form, and spins around to rest his back against the warm spot. "Why do you hope for that?"

"We're hoping to get divorced when he returns."

"But why?" Luigi questions again, and the echo pounds in his heart. This seems all too familiar to him, yet he's never gone through such a coveted, evil process like divorce. Divorce rips people apart at the seams and leaves only mangled bits once the beast has retracted its fangs, claws, and vicious glares.

"I don't love him anymore, and he doesn't love me either," Lucina answers with finality, and it sounds like she won't press on with the subject.

"I-" Luigi opens his mouth to apologize, perhaps sympathize with her, but never empathize. Never will he empathize with the blue haired idiot beyond the wall.

"I'd rather not talk about my husband anymore," she snaps. Then, with more softness in her voice, Lucina asks, "Do you have any siblings? I'm an only child."

Luigi would rather prefer there not be any discussion of family members, as he's had his fair fights and troubles in between. His mouth fills with venom, tongue feeling clouded by all the poison that builds in his gums and washes his teeth a putrid, vomit green. "I have a brother," he says. He can see him now, Luigi can, in his eyes. The prodigal son. The one who gets the ladies and all the trophies, and everything else in between. "My _brother,_ " Luigi practically does spit the word out with saliva and harshness behind it, "Is the epitome of perfect. He has done everything under the sun. Went to school to get a medical degree. Met the hottest woman on the planet, some politician or senator or other. He is an expert tennis, golf, baseball, and soccer player. He drives go-karts like it's nothing. He owns a gambling casino. Ask it, name it, and my brother has done it."

"Sounds like you don't like him."

"No one ever pays attention to me. It's always focused on him. He's got some stupid mansion out in the middle of nowhere, and I think he wants to give it to me as part of good faith. Because he's so damn busy all the time, there's never any attention spent on the mansion. He'd rather give me a dry, run-out husk of a building than actual, true brotherly love. And I think the place is haunted of all things it can be. Haunted!"

"You don't actually believe in ghosts, do you?"

"I don't know what I believe in anymore," he says gruffly, rubbing his shoulder.

"I'm sorry to hear about you not liking your brother."

"Like him? I hate him!" Luigi spits out. "I want him dead!"

Lucina's voice seems to quit on the other end, and all the green man is surrounded by is silence. Stupid, _stupid_ silence! Why isn't he ever left alone, just once in his damn life? Why must the world hate him so? Luigi runs a hand through his hair, the anger flushing through his body and to the ends of his fingertips. He can still see him, his older brother, behind the raging mask. Everything he's ever said or hated boiled into that one sentence, where solemn diamond eyes stare back in disappointment. And what has Luigi ever accomplished? Running his wife out onto the street, and nearly losing an arm trying to break down this wall.

There's a stasis of nothingness between the two.

"Why haven't we spoken until now?"

"Hm?"

"I mean, think about it..." Lucina trails off, trying to find the words. "We've lived next to each other for how many years now? All of a sudden a wall goes up and now we're talking. I mean... why?"

"Perhaps the wall is our worst nightmare put into reality," Luigi ponders. "Human interaction."

"Do you really want your brother dead?" Lucina asks, voice gentle.

"No. I don't," Luigi sighs. He feels incredibly ashamed. It is true that his brother does seem to be like a paragon of sorts, capitalizing gains on all of his endeavors, yet never failing at any of them. He's made of money, and Luigi is made of cinders. "I love my brother. I just wish I had a sample of his success in my life. Not even a whole lot. Just a taste."

"I want what you have."

"What? Solitude and depression?"

"No..." Lucina trails off once more. "What you and your wife had. Happiness. Luke and I never stood a chance. No children. No pets. Just hatred, I think."

"Liana and I were not happy..." Luigi stutters out a nervous laugh.

"Maybe. Maybe not. But I think this wall may evoke some of that happiness out from you. You'll never know."

"This stupid hell. I hate this damn thing."

"I hate it too. It's the things I don't understand in life that I hate the most..."

It seems that Luigi and Lucina come to a mutual agreement, in the thick of it all, that their neutrality sets in, and their hearts resonate against the cinder and mortar fortress that blocks it all.

And so another day ticks by. _Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

The hell that the two have built stands tall.

It shall not fall.

* * *

 **Hey, a 3k chapter! Kinda breaks my rhythm I wanted of having five 2k chapters, but I digress. I think this is my favorite of the chapters somewhat; I'm a sucker for metaphorical things and I think that it is coming out in the most beautiful of ways. Can you all still see the twist coming about in this, like with Native? It'll be hard to see, I think, but do enough digging and something may appear. What were y'alls thoughts? I'd be interested in knowing. I cannot wait for the next chapter. Thank you all so much for reading! Please review and let me know what you guys think. I will post one more chapter before the end of my Winter Break, which ends on the 4th of January, but that'll be unknown until that day comes, for Chapter #4: Sickness. Love you all! Have an amazing day! Bye!**

 **~ Paradigm**


	4. Sickness

**Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter of The Hell We Built, Chapter #4: Sickness. Not the most lovely sounding title I can imagine, but this will be the resurgence from my long hiatus it seems I'm incapable of breaking, I can only type two-hundred words at a time and even then that is super minimal... and I don't know why, but I'll shrug my shoulders and keep pushing it. I'm gonna have a Brinstar Depths update this week, as well as Phantoms of Ice and Fire; hopefully Ashes of Kyber will come up too. Syrenet will be the only chapter update from next week, if I play my cards right. Updates in February might also become super minimal too, because I am going to be in a lot of plays then. A ramble, but I digress. Enjoy Chapter #4!**

* * *

 _The Hell We Built_

 _Chapter #4: Sickness_

"What do you think of rainbow colored sidewalk?"

"What?" Luigi stutters out a laugh, head backed up against the stone slab of the wall. He's looking up at the sky, laughing, a beer bottle clenched in his right hand that he lifts up to his mouth to take sips from every so often. The sky is an aurora of wild and ferocious sunburst oranges, dazzling and edgy carnation pinks, and vivid halcyons from a sun sinking beneath the sky. He manages to find an old yearbook in one of the cupboards, from the child that never existed, and he flips through it, remembering memories that never existed.

Lucina calls at him from the second floor of her house, where Luigi, on his porch can hear her perfectly. He cannot see her, as the wall seems to go endlessly into the sky. He wonders how far it goes. Her call constantly disrupts his train of thought about how high the wall is, but he is no longer bothered whenever she speaks. Her call is something juvenile. Drinking, _drinking,_ oh drinking, _drinking,_ the drinking. Lucina is off her rocker, having several glasses of tequila in her belly, giggling while she speaks to him on her side of the wall.

He rummages in the fridge for some alcohol, eyes seizing up an eight-pack of Bud Light. There's nowhere else to go except be stuck in the house twenty-four seven. If he takes his car out somewhere, he can only drive in the space the walls on either side of him would allow as wiggle room. Nothing's ever open because no one outside of their personal space can reach where their going. He's never felt so alone, yet he has Lucina, and she has him and they face the cruelty of the world side by side, hand in hand, arm in arm.

Four of the bottles now lay discarded in the grass. His mind starts to slow, just somewhat, and he slurs his words with defined practice. There's no danger in his absurd levels of drinking, not anymore, as he isn't driving. He can go and crash into a tree and there'd be no first responders to save him. As if Luigi wishes to be saved.

Lucina is at her fourth glass of tequila, which causes her to prompt the rainbow colored sidewalk question, as if it is an entirely normal question to ask people.

"I mean it!" she says a little too loudly for his liking, the harsh sounds reverberating inside his skull. "Why is sidewalk always gray. Why can't it be rainbow colored?"

"Like... gay?" Luigi furrows his eyebrows.

"No, not everything rainbow colored means it's associated with that," she scoffs.

He laughs, tilting the drink back up to his lips. It is a remedy now, but it is not his medicine. Luigi has never been a drinker. He's only been a smoker, and even then his cigarettes have disappeared. Because of his wife. Because of Liana, he lost his cigarettes. He coughs, clutching his chest fiercely as a fire seems to burn inside him. Like the cigarettes. Liana's hole is where his heart used to be, and now it is a gaping pit full of lies. Luigi isn't bothered by his inner monologues anymore, it is all he has to keep himself company now.

"You know what's weird," he speaks out suddenly, eyes fixated on the grass, "And it doesn't deal with gay sidewalks, I can promise you that."

"What?"

"My refrigerator," Luigi responds mysteriously, leaving it at that. A delicate pause hangs in the air, with Lucina's exasperated gasp finishing the centerpiece.

"What's weird with your refrigerator?"

"I eat from it, y'know, the frozen dinners and everything, or some chicken... I clearly see myself take the food out, yet when I close the door, it is as if it's replaced by another frozen dinner or piece of chicken..."

"An endless supplying refrigerator," Lucina chuckles. "Do you think it is because whatever creator that put this wall up doesn't want us to starve? Like... magic..."

"Perhaps." Another swing of his beer.

"I could really use a cigarette..."

"Me too."

"Do you smoke?"

"I used to," Luigi says. He doesn't want to go down that train of thought at the moment, it isn't right, but he knows she'll break the boundaries and do it anyways, because that's what Lucina does.

"Why don't you smoke anymore?" _Damn her._

"Liana made me quit. We couldn't be together if I smoked, she was super against it."

He thinks about her. He hasn't seen her in over two weeks now, it's been two weeks of just Luigi, Lucina, and their respective houses. He's asked about hers hundreds of times, and it sounds like it's this agglomeration of castles taken round the world, broken up, and glued together to make her dominion. He mentions the plastered walls full of kid drawings, drawings made by children that didn't exist, yet they're there all the same. The tepid wallpaper that seems to fade with every passing second, and his heart is heavy. Yellow, flowered, almost rustic looking from the 1950's. Gross, somewhat, but Luigi doesn't mind it. It's the only thing that reminds him of Liana now. That and the cigarettes.

Luigi feels Liana - _Lucina, you idiot, her name is Lucina, not Liana! -_ press into the wall with her back, as if it is shifting with her movements, folding into her, becoming part of her. He hears her take a sip of her tequila, sounds like it's a rounded glass, and exhales. "Liana..." she says breathlessly.

"Why do you do that?"

"Why do I do what?" Lucina asks innocently.

"Say my wife's name with such exaltation? She's not a ghost, she's not dead. She's _my_ wife."

"Yet I never hear you speak of her. It's seldom."

"Well, there's plenty more in the world to talk about than just our spouses. I am nice and I don't talk about Luigi," he says smartly.

"Luke."

"What?"

There's a shift of weight from the other side of the wall, from Lucina's Barbie dream-like world with glass roofs and twinkling Christmas light decorations around the fringes. "You said your name when referring to my husband. My husband's name is Luke, not Luigi."

"Oh. I'm sorry. It must be the beers. I- I don't drink," Luigi stutters.

"Clearly."

"Why? Are you such an alcoholic."

"Perhaps I am. Perhaps I'm not. Why does it matter?"

"It doesn't."

"The wall says your lying to me."

Damn Lucina with her whole 'the wall speaks to me' shtick. Luigi wonders why he does not have this glorious psychic mental connection with an inanimate object that shouldn't be alive. He longs for a closeness like that with someone, except everyone he possibly could care about has left him, like some sort of cruel joke. Luigi has no idea why he's been punished in such a way, yet he constantly claims to her - Lucina - that it is a hell they built together, a hell they made for each other when, just two weeks prior, he never knew such a person even existed.

Luigi shuffles around in his sleep last night, he doesn't have insomnia, but he is incapable of going to sleep for some reason. He tosses and turns, silk wrapped around his shoulders and his thighs as he exhales, a frown beginning to form on his face as he stares at the etched ceiling. There are symbols in the ceiling, but he does not discern one from the other. They all form squares with different edges poking out on the sides, like hieroglyphics that cannot be read.

"So... I drink and you smoke," Lucina says, with a tone of questionability following the sentence. "Sounds like a match made in heaven."

"We'd be a good couple together."

"You think so?"

"Sure, I mean, get rid of you constantly asking me questions about my wife and intruding my personal life, and there's a real match there."

" _I_ intrude your personal life?"

"Yes."

"You do it too."

"Not as bad as you do."

"You don't need to get upset with me."

"Who said I'm getting upset with you?"

"Your tone of voice."

"I'm not mad!" Luigi declares with finality, chucking his fourth beer bottle, the bottle still unfinished. Half of it remains - Luigi is the glass half empty type, he realizes then and there - and it sloshes about everywhere. Amber and copper drops sling it to the air like an erupting volcano, dousing Luigi in a bourbon shower. He curses, patting away at his pants which were sprinkled with alcohol. "Dammit!"

The alcohol burns into his pants, like smoldering cinders from a burnt down house. He grits his teeth in frustration. Lucina is an expert at messing up what is supposed to be 'good and normal'.

"What'd you do?"

"I got beer all over myself."

"Serves you right."

"Why are you being so nasty to me?" he stares at the wall with a peculiar glance.

"I could say the same thing back at you. You're being really hostile tonight-" Lucina snipes back, but before she can finish, she begins coughing intensely. Luigi stands in half awe, half terror as the wall seems to visibly shake, as if its foundations are being ripped apart by an earthquake. He can barely hear the din of her coughing, a fierce one with hacking and everything, over the rumble of the earth that ceases when her cough ceases.

"Are you uh... you okay?"

"Yeah- I'm, I'm fine..." she coughs weakly once more.

"The wall shook," Luigi says, and even when he utters out the phrase, he can hardly believe it himself. The night gets weirder and weirder. Is it the alcohol?

"I think you're seeing things."

"It sounds like you're sick."

"Well that's because I am." Lucina's tone is striking, yet punctured with a sadness that Luigi feels sink into her skin.

"Is it a cold? Bronchitis maybe?"

"I- I'd rather not say."

"You can share it with me, it's not like I'm gonna tell anyone," Luigi lets out a nervous laugh.

If he could see through the wall, he'd see Lucina sitting on her side of the boundary, teeth biting down on her set of porcelain lips, feeling faint by the thought. If he could see into Lucina's soul, he'd see the black walls pushing in on her heart, trapping the fire to live and exhale in a prison that can only move in an anatomical space. If he sees a little bit more outward, at her body, into her lungs, he'd see the oddly shaped lumps that should not be there, malignant in form, that move independently on their own, beating as if they're their own living organisms.

"I've uh... I'm in stage three lung cancer, Luigi..." Lucina answers, and then she stands up, placing the tequila glass resting against the wall. She does not wait for Luigi's stuttered response, only the thaw and numbness of her answer remains, and he's standing in his backyard, hands clenched around that fifth bottle of beer, wanting to smash it into the wall with all of his might.

He rewinds over what he's heard.

He's 'heard' of cancer, yet he's never had to directly deal with it. No one in his immediate family has ever contacted the disease, least to his knowledge, but all of sudden it is hitting him in the face like a wet glove.

Luigi sinks to his knees, feeling the tears well at his eyes, a pressure building in his throat.

It is as if Lucina's very presence leaves him in this moment, though all she is doing is entering her house to go to bed.

He pukes up the remnants of his four beers onto the grass until the composition turns into a brown, oozing black sludge. Along with it comes the years of his smoking, charred cinders and ash globules that stick together, coated in a crimson substance. Luigi pukes everything he's ever ingested, and the foundations of the wall tremble, shudder, and break as he retches.

It is deep into the night until he stops, and by then Luigi has vomited and cried all that remains of him.

He stands up, sniffling, hoping he could call out, just to plead with the powers that be. He's never even met this woman, he's only spoken to her since the damned thing has been built, and the very fact he now knows what trouble and heartache she's going through does he want to be there and help. A guilty, conscientious sort of thing.

Luigi goes to bed soon thereafter, a pulse repeating in his head.

The sludge of vomit stays in the grass, a reminder of what he's leaving behind. The bagging he is refusing to pick up.

The hell that he and Lucina have built darken one more day, over the sickness that unites them.

* * *

 **A total feel good chapter, y'know? It seems any time I have a hiatus, a chapter of The Hell We Built is what I keep coming back to. Well, there we have it folks! That was Chapter #4: Sickness, of The Hell We Built. Two things to take away from this chapter - three things, really - and they are: Luigi seems to mix the names up, the wall trembles whenever Lucina or Luigi cough, and that our bluenette is diagnosed and suffers from third stage lung cancer. I can't ever have a happy ending, can I? You'll understand it all in the end, I promise. And speaking of the end, that's what the next chapter is. Chapter #5: Collapse, is the last chapter of this short story, and what are your ideas as to how this will end? I can bet you that it'll be far more outrageous than what you think. Thank you all so much for reading. Please review and let me know what you thought! Love you all! Bye!**

 **~ Paradigm**


	5. Collapse

**Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with a brand new chapter of The Hell We Built, the _final_ chapter of The Hell We Built, #5: Collapse. I will always love writing pieces like these, where they're a short amount of chapters between two or three characters, and this idea is taking love letters or wall conversations to new depths and heights, I'd like to say, but that may be pretentious for all I know. Luigi and Lucina are a strange pairing that I actually stand behind a lot more than most of the other ones I've written. Would you like to see me write a few pairing one-shots that are unconventional (MxF, MxM, FxF) let me know in a PM or in a review and I might take it up to try! Enjoy the last chapter of The Hell We Built!**

* * *

 _The Hell We Built_

 _Chapter #5: Collapse_

Luigi wakes up with a fierce pain in his chest. He sits upright in his bed, a hand immediately going to clutch his chest. A searing stab ripples underneath the skin, as if someone is tearing away the flesh bit by bit with pliers. He throws the bed covers off, jumping to his feet and rushing over to the mirror by his bedside. He looks at himself in the mirror, his wave of brown hair tousled from tossing and turning in his sleep, his diamond eyes wide in panic and confusion. His chest rises and falls rapidly, a heartbeat mimicking that of a drum that goes on and on and one even when the drummer boy is dead. Nothing seems erroneous or askew with his body, yet the pain lingers.

He stumbles down the stairs, coughing and crashing into the banister, wall, and couch. He cusses more than he has ever in his entire life, all the while shouting a myriad of cries for the blue haired maiden a wall over. "Lucina!" he calls. "Lucina! What's going on?" Luigi manages to make it outside to the grass, and he collapses down to his knees. Luigi wipes at his mouth with the back of his left hand, the thorn in his chest slowly starting to recede away as if it never existed. He gasps as the pain starts to vanish into his veins, like euphoria where masochist tendencies take precedence. Luigi rolls onto his back, still dressed only in his underwear, shirtless, and fresh out of bed.

The man looks up at the sky. It is unusually bright for six in the morning during Daylight Savings; normally the dusk is still lifting, very briefly like bombarding rainbows that spill out of a glass chandelier, and the clouds are a hazy fog that kisses the ground softly. Luigi's breathing returns to normal, and he tilts his head to the right. The wall is still standing strong, his hell, his prison that goes so high even the Tower of Babel is jealous in its grandeur. The red brick mocks Luigi, a sneer that is vicious and taunting. _You'll never prevail over me. I'm your enemy. I'm your monster. Stay out here and wilt. Stay out here and die._

For some reason, this causes him to sit up. Luigi tilts his head ever so slightly up to the awkward brightness above, straining his neck, extending the reach of his ears. Why hasn't the maiden's voice appeared over the wall? Luigi is always woken up early in the morning because of Lucina's joyous singing, singing songs and tales of girls with jonquils in their hair, probably holding a flower basket and twirling back and forth in her mock garden. Roses in her hair, secretive and seductive glances passed over barstools and glasses of gin and tonic.

"Lucina?" he calls out. There's no answer. "Lucina?" he tries again.

There's a murmur from behind the wall, and if Luigi had not been exerting himself to such a stand of pain, then he'd have never heard it. He is unable to discern syllables from words from mutterings. He scrambles over to the structure, pressing his ear up against the dirt and grime, shuddering as mortar slips into the ear canal, but he needs the company, he needs the answers.

 _She has the power. She holds the power. She is the one who understands how this wall is built. Listen to her. Listen to what she says! Stay out here to wilt, collapse and let the ground sew itself around you._

"Go away!" Lucina yells back at him, and Luigi bounces on his feet, skidding a few inches away from the wall, which seems to shift forward like a punching bag after getting deftly slugged.

Almost as if the wall is tethered to Luigi, a resounding pain slams into his stomach. He howls with pain, hands going to his body, and he eats dirt. Lucina is chanting the words, _go away, go away, go away go awaygoawaygoawaygoawaygoaway..._

"Lucina, stop!" Luigi screams. "You're hurting me!"

"Good! It's payback for all you've done! You've ruined me! My life, my kids, my house, my job, my marriage, it's all your fault!"

"I- I don't know what you're talking about... I-" Luigi tries to formulate words through the searing mask of agony his body is experiencing. The blinding white cover of suffering distorts his vision; he witnesses the ground shift in acrylic colors, fluorescent yellow and splashing pink lemonade carnations that dance like the waves on the beach. Lucina says something unintelligible and this time the pain comes from the back of his head. Luigi lets out an inhuman scream of pain, twisting as if he's undergoing an exorcism.

Lucina's voice rises over the wall as if she's summoning a storm with her very words. _Go away. Go away you monster, wither here and die. Go away, go away, goawaygoawaygoawaygoawaygoawaygoaway..._

Then it all stops. All that moves, ceases. Luigi's agony evaporates like steam from melted ice on the sidewalk, all goes quiet. The sky darkens, the brightness above flees from the thief in the night, and it feels like 6 AM, a normal routine, a normal day, and Luigi expects to hear Lucina's singing voice glide to greet him. He rubs at his eyes. " _I'm dreaming,"_ he tells himself like a child, rocking back and forth. " _I'm dreaming. This is all a dream. This is all a dream, and she's okay. My wife, Liana is home safely. My wife Lucina is gorgeous and we're going to have a son..._ "

"But, Luigi," Lucina says, and it jostles the man out of his fetal position and back to being upright. "Your wife's name is Liana, and she's not with a child..." her voice warps to a plagued fire, melded steel being smashed with a hammer and an anvil, "You murdered that child, remember?"

"No! What are you saying? I never killed anyone..."

"Liar! Murderer! You're still lying to me, after all this time," Lucina's tone is accusatory, bitter, vile, a viper dancing out of the bush, primed to strike. "Even after we met all those years ago you still lie to me. I'm not an idiot! You hate me, you despise me, I want you dead! Mother, father, and child all!"

"Lucina, you aren't making sense..." Luigi babbles, getting on his knees, pressing his head up against the wall. Tears fall from his face, his body racks with shudders and sobs and he's never cried this hard before in his life. The sadness he feels is an indescribable one that is worse than watching brutality live or on TV screens. There Luigi remains, in the hell he's built, sobbing and unable to repent for his sins and unable to come to terms with the fact he's failing; he's falling and he's falling so hard that even Icarus is incapable of catching up with him. Two doomed prodigies, a doomed son, a doomed father, and the two angels collapse to the sea together to await their death by drowning...

Luigi is still crying even when Lucina stops spitting venom, he's holding himself while he cries until Lucina shouts one more time. "Go away! Never come back!"

Then, as if there are imaginary stands built above this hell, built above this wall, a crowd watches to see what unfolds next.

Lucina lets out a cough, another, a third cough, and then a blood-curdling scream.

It launches Luigi into action. The wall buckles underneath the sound of wheezed air, and then when the bluenette's ear-splitting shriek fades into nothingness, a brick pops out of place. Luigi, stuck in a stupor of shock and helplessness, watches the brick fall from its foundation and land in the grass with a soft _puh,_ eyes widening. The wall is collapsing.

"Lucina!" he cries out, clawing at the wall. It crumbles at his touch, which pushes him even further. "Lucina, hold on! I'm coming, oh god please!" Luigi is sobbing again, not having truly ended his tearful moment. Every time his fingers press any part of the wall, it transforms into sand, pouring away and spilling onto the sides around him as he claws his way in, he claws his way out of hell and his way out of the prison he had made. "Lucina!"

When he manages to break through an opening, he realizes this is the first time he's left somewhere else beside his own home in a matter of weeks. His eyes scan over the backyard of Lucina's home, and his eyes find her. "Lucina!" The bluenette is currently on her back, shaking uncontrollably, gaze upwards, mouth stretched open in a silent scream. He races over to her, crouching down to cradle her in his arms. "Please stop! Please, please, I can't lose you too, I can't lose you too Lucina... Lucina... no... Oh god Liana, I can't..."

Lucina looks straight into his eyes, and her stare seizes his like fire, ensnaring him in a vice that she'll never uncoil for him. "No, Luigi. Not Liana... Lucina..." she says weakly. Straining herself, Lucina presses her lips up against his, catching Luigi's choked sobs and choked words in surprise as she kisses him. Their intimacy is not romantic, but it is painful, and through their kiss he can feel the world dying around him. Luigi opens his eyes, and the body of Lucina, the woman he's never gotten to know, dissolves in his hands like a pillar of salt, crumbling away like the very hell we built. In the place of Lucina's body is a rose, a rose with navy blue petals and a black stem.

Luigi doesn't know what he's doing, but he picks up the rose, and then looks up. He watches, without even shedding a tear, as the last of the wall falls, the collapse is finite, and it is glorious.

* * *

He's never been here before.

There is a tangy taste flowing on the air, and ruby red droplets drip off of his clenched hand. Luigi's gaze is hard, staring out over a graveyard that overlooks the ocean. There are joyful noises down below on the sand, bright pastel colors playing tag in the wind as kites fly, children race around, and the waves crash against the shore. Up on the hill, on the cemetery, there is a greyscale world that is silent and solemn, where the sun shines without warmth.

Luigi looks down at his hand, a crumpled up rose still clutched in his fingers. Blue petals, navy petals laced with specks of salt a dark stem that resembles his heart, and it is the last reminder he'll ever have of her.

There has never been a Louis, or a Liana, or a Lucy, or any name of the sort. It is only a single pair of names, Luigi and Lucina. His wife, her husband, a couple who meets and lies to each other from day one until day seven hundred and ninety-two. Even when they move into a large house together, he knows he's still lying to her. Even when he agrees to file the divorce papers, he knows he's lying about something, but he can't imagine what it is. His brother and his fiancé visit him from time to time after her passing, but it is not enough as Luigi feels jealous seeing his brother be so perfect and so gorgeous with the gilded age buttering him up.

The two meet in a bar, like most modern love stories that are trashy or have zero morals - Luigi snorts, and he wonders why he used to drink so much - where eyes flit at each other in passing gazes over the distancing barstools, while the bartender pours shots of vodka, glasses of gin and tonic, finally ending the meal with swirling glasses of wine that are darker than the blood the two spill in their first night together. He is into shouting her name while she dances around him, hands interlaced with hair, fingers drowning in every curve of flesh, ghost-like hips, invisible kisses, glassy stares between screens, and drunken text messages that light up a pallid ceiling.

They're married on the first Sunday in June, in some year Luigi removes far away from his memory. He realizes, perhaps too late when thinking about it, that his lie that he's always said to her, to his Lucina, is that he never loved her. He will always love her. He marries her _because_ he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, and he cries himself to sleep the night she passes away _because_ he loves her. _Loved her,_ though it makes no difference.

When they struggle together in moments of financial crisis, Lucina thinks it is a cute game to call the other by a different name. She settles on Louis, it is easy and nothing too outlandish like Lionel or any other imperfect name for that matter. He wants something wild, after spending a week in Mexico on a business trip, that he goes for the exotic Liana, like the juice spilling from a fresh peach, the tanginess of salt and citrus on the wind, the colors of flamenco dancing in his mind, the fire burning on the beach, and his heart is overwhelmed. However, they never break the glass ceiling of getting out of their financial crisis, and instead it worsens. The names stick, and they say them to each other it almost sounds real. Luigi becomes Louis and that never changes. He almost engraves _Liana_ on her tombstone.

A flicker of hope rises when she busts into his home office one day, holding a pregnancy test in her hands, squealing like she's in high school again. A boy, they're going to have, she thinks, and she wants to name him Luigi Jr. He, the man in namesake, finds it absolutely ridiculous that she breaks a sacred rule of calling him by his real name in such a forsaken time; they're upset at each other and Lucina, his foolish, silly little wife wants to play games. Six and a half months later, Lucina is in the bathroom sobbing over the bad news of her father's death when something just does not feel right... and then an hour later there are surgical lights above her, head swimming like an intoxicated driver.

Luigi wakes her a few days later with a tear-laden face. Their baby, their precious baby boy is dead and she's had a miscarriage and she's never felt more like the world is against her than in this moment. Lucina takes up smoking. She's done it once or twice in high school, but she's not a smoker.

" _You smoke?" Luigi asks her one evening where they're curled up on the couch._

 _"No," she replies, even being such a smart ass to take a puff on the cigarette currently in her hands._

 _"I think you're crazy."_

 _"And that's why you love me."_

 _"I know."_

 _Lucina taps the cigarette over an ashtray. "How ironic would it be if I got lung cancer?"_

The news is truth. The news is real, and Luigi mirrors his wife in that the world must hate him as his wife crumples underneath a hell that she's built, where her lungs blacken with tar and she coughs in the middle of the night and she's coughing until the day she dies.

Luigi takes up gardening, and finds a blue rose. Lucina's favorite color is blue, and years later, he still has it, covers it in salt, and finally searches up the god-forsaken graveyard where she's buried. Forever and forever Luigi stays with a hand on the iron wrought fence, metal painted black, and even then he wanders aimlessly among the graves, reading their inscriptions until the words blur together.

He approaches her tombstone when the time feels right, if it's ever felt right is the question he needs to be asking.

Luigi lets out a sigh, placing the rose down. Etched in gray words reads, _Lucina, my wife, my wonderful wife. Oh how you've messed up. I don't know where you've gone. Don't worry, I'll be there too._

There is no hesitancy in his step. The crumbled up rose falls from his fingertips, he hears it hit the ground, and Luigi swivels on his heel to go nowhere else but home, to curl up in the sheets, and stare at the entryway to his bedroom before he remembers that she's gone. His wife is gone, collapsed to the cruelty of the world, and to never come home.

Behind him, a blood sun sinks beneath the sky.

* * *

 **Well, when a chapter has got me tearing up, even then I think I may have gone too far, and I can only imagine what it must feel like to you guys. There we are ladies and gents, the ending chapter of The Hell We Built, Chapter #5: Collapse. I have had a fun time writing this piece, and the twist has been sitting deep within since the very beginning just waiting to be unleashed. I hope you all had fun getting dragged along this journey of sadness, pain, madness, insanity, and of course, introspection. I realize now, that every time I sit down to write, there's a purpose behind it. I don't just write to _write,_ if that makes sense. My chapters may be long, but I pour every inch of my being into what I put out here.**

 **I think I'm gonna do a series of one-shots that are requested pairings by you guys - I'll be making this announcement for Brinstar Depths and Syrenet as well, _hey_ go check out those two stories, they're quite cool IMO - so if there's any unconventional pairing you can think of that is tasteful across MxF, MxM, and FxF, let me know and I'll see if I can think of something decisive. Thank you all for reading! Please review and let me know what you thought of this ending. Have an amazing day! Love you all! Bye!**

 **~ Paradigm**


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